Julio Cesar Garcia Stops Jose Medina in 1st round KO!

By Tony Krebs: Making his first ring appearance since last June, former light middleweight prospect, now fighting as a super middleweight Julio Cesar Garcia (41-3, 35 KOs) stopped Jose Medina (14-12, 10 KOs) in the 1st round on Friday night at the War Memorial Auditorium, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The fight was over with the first punch, however, with Garcia, 21, dropping Medina with a powerful left hook to the head, sending him to the canvas where he lay on his back, his left legs sticking up in the air slightly in a rigid manner – a classic sign of a fighter having been knocked out.

The referee Jorge Alonso officially stopped the bout at 0;13 of the 1st round. Some people grumbled about the knockout later, suggesting that Medina, whom had been knocked out in five of his last six fights, didn’t want to fight and had gone down with the first punch to have an easy night, and to collect a quick paycheck.

However, that seems highly unlikely because the punch from Garcia was a huge left hook, perfectly thrown with good leverage on it, and when it connected it dropped the slightly pudgy Medina like a ton of bricks dropping to the floor. He fell straight backwards, and I doubt anyone would want to fall like that no matter how much they might not want to fight. And, the rigid flexing of both legs in which both of them went straight out slightly in the air, like I mentioned already, is a class sign of a fighter that’s been knocked out.

Shortly after the bell rang in the first round, Garcia set up the hook perfectly, by slipping the jab of Medina, then coming around the side and landing a powerful left hook to the jaw of Medina, who looked as if he didn’t see the punch coming or if he did, he probably didn’t think that Garcia was going to get the kind of power on the punch that he did. Whatever the case, there was no way he was going to get up from a shot like that, and the referee didn’t bother even starting a count, instead immediately telling Medina to stay down so that he could be looked over by a doctor.

Garcia was coming off a shocking defeat last year to 40 year-old Troy Browning, who outworked Garcia and beat him by a 10-round majority decision last June. It seemed at the time that Garcia didn’t have any interest in fighting on the night and appeared to give away the fight by just going through the motions. He would later say that he was battling weight problems leading up to the fight, and that it affected him in the bout, preventing him from giving his best performance on that night.

As good as Garcia looked against Medina on Friday night, one must not forget that Medina was brought in precisely to make Garcia to look good – to help fix his wounded ego, which had taken a hit in his loss to Browning last year. There’s nothing wrong with that, as most fighters do this after a particularly disappointing loss like the one that Garcia suffered. It’s hard to say how good Garcia is, whether he’s back to where he was, because his opponent went down to quickly and didn’t give us the boxing fans and writers a good look at how well Garcia has recovered from the loss.

As such, we’ll have to wait and see, and hope that he fights a little better opponent next time out, preferably a legitimate C-class opponent or maybe a B-class fighter, although I’m not holding my breath on that happening.